No Couch For Richter?? A Report From A TONIGHT SHOW WITH CONAN O’BRIEN Test Show!!

“The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien” launches Monday with Will Ferrell slated as the first guest. Word is Tom Hanks will be the guest on Tuesday.
The New York Daily News reports today that Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and The Masturbating Bear will both make the transition to 11:35 p.m.
The Max Weinberg 7 is history, replaced by the larger Max Weinberg and the Tonight Show Band (now with James Wormworth as a permanent addition), but the John Lurie "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" theme music will be repurposed for Conan's "Tonight."
And it looks like Andy Richter won’t normally be sitting on the couch like he did in the old days:

Dear AICN,
My name's Asterios Kokkinos, and you once printed my review for a midnight "Norbit" screening on the cinerama dome at the Arclight – the best way to see a gigantic Eddie Murphy I know of! Anyway, today I attended a test show of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien at Citywalk, and here's my review:
"Today I attended a test show for The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien - they're doing a week of test shows before the show officially premiers next week. It was fantastic.
Like many Conan fans, I was concerned the shift to 11:30 might soften the tone of the show. I'm happy to report, its the same show you know and love. He entered to the "Late Night w/Conan O'Brien" theme, did the string dance, and asked us to keep cool, informing us that we were his babies.
He also has a new string maneuver, involving pulling his jaw out on a string and then cutting the string. It must be seen to be believed.
The first segment? "Celebrity Survey", with the classic 11 note theme song. Shots at the ages or weights of certain celebrities? Indeed! An insinuation that a certain celebrity might be promiscuous? You better believe it!
I do not want to spoil the identities of the guests (it wasn't just someone they'd pulled off the Universal lot for a favor, Conan cut some local promos confirming that these two would be guests in the future) or some of the pre-recorded segments they screened for laughs, but I will mention two more things. 1) The warm up guy they hired is LA comedy legend Jimmy Pardo, who's spent over 20 years on the road and even longer working his way into our hearts. 2) Andy Richter has not skipped a beat in his return. Before the show, he and Pardo bantered about how the new studio was haunted (Richter: "We insisted on a haunted theater. The ghosts are actually crew guys who died on break.")
Max Weinberg and the Tonight Show Band were on fire. Pender walked out and sang a number, they played "Come Fly With Me" (a staple of their commercial breaks), and even played the Ray Davies classic, "Better Things", which I was happy to hear live.
Only complaint, and its a small one: Andy has his own announcers podium. He looks pretty cool in it, but the whole time I really wanted to see him sitting next to Conan like in the old days. I hope they move him over to the couch soon, the chemistry between them is classic.
That's it! Can't wait to see what's coming up in future shows."

...is the real star and should be the one sitting behind the desk. Conan runs hot and cold. Mostly cold. Letterman, Kimmel, and Ferguson are funnier in my opinion. This is going to be The Tonight Show in name only. People who grew up on Johnny Carson and then Leno aren't going to be able to stomach Triumph and the Masturbating Bear. You'll see, Conan will quickly soften his format when the ratings take a nose-dive.

I hope they don't water down his material for a broader audience. I've been unable to sit through Letterman since he moved to 11:30, dumbed down the writing and installed that permanent false grin on his face.

They stopped airing Conan this year (fuckheads!), but still aired The Tonight Show. Got no idea if they will go on with The Tonight Show, when it's hosted by Conan.<br>
And yes, I know, I could go to the NBC page or Hulu to watch every episode, but because I live outside of the USA it won't work for me, unless I spent lots of time to find a working proxy, which then slows down my internet connection and make me wait hours till the episode has loaded.

has a new host Ryan Tubridy. Go to rte player to check that out. Pat kenny ends his ten year tenure with a garden party. as well as not so subtle jab at his successor. "while working in rte. I tried to be inventive. We both had different paths. He has his young fogey thing. I do my own thing. He tried to be parkinson but I was never that.....

Since I just DVR everything. I fast fwd past the opening of Fallon or anything he does with the audience. I just get right to the guest interview. Fallon sucks as a talkshow host, but he's ok when he's friends with the guest. For the most part his interviews become awkward.

Which is actually a ripoff of the E networks The SOUP. Kimmel doesn't have much jokes to tell. So his entire monologue mainly consist of TV clips for him to comment on. Leno started doing this too in the last years. Show a clip, then make a comment on, get a big laugh.

I have a free 6 month promotion thing with Sirius and it blows. Stern's show has turned into listening in on a circle of unintersting people talking amongst themselves. Music stations suck too on Sirius and the sound quality sounds like dog turd.

I never watched Jimmy Kimmel, but what you described sounds awfully like what German Late Night host Stefan Raab does for something like 10 years in his show. (although he hasn't been funny for more than 5 years, so if Kimmel does it better, he has my blessing.)

NBC and Universal are the same company now: NBC Universal. They merged a few years ago.<p>NBC has been slowly moving its studios to the Universal lot. They built Conan a new office building on a parking lot next to STAGE ONE at Universal Studios, where the new Tonight Show studio is located.<p> The reviewer here was invited to see the test show while at the CityWalk.

There was a mention of it in the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE article about Conan on Sunday. Apparently, they've even made him a REAL drivable desk attached to golf cart.<p>The article also mentions various remotes they plan to do in California.<p>Here is a link: http://tinyurl.com/p9s69b

Here's a snippet from the article I linked above:<p>
"Ideas were starting to take shape, too, many of them inspired by the back lot itself. 'Jaws' was a huge hit for Universal, and one writer suggested that Bruce, the mechanical shark, could occasionally drop by the show. 'In our mind, he sounds like Paul Lynde,' O’Brien explained. 'He dishes dirt about his co-stars.'<p> The show had an exact replica of O’Brien’s desk built onto the front of a golf cart and, later that day, O’Brien was scheduled to take a short road trip through the studio. <p>'We’re going to drive up to the ‘Psycho’ house and try and interview Norman Bates at the desk,' O’Brien said. 'And maybe we’ll take a break during 1869 in Western Town. And then we’ll swing by the ‘Desperate Housewives’ set and try to see Eva Longoria in her trailer for an interview.'"

Let's face it. Conan is a niche product and while it's admirable he's unwilling to change to appeal to a mainstream audience, it only shortens time until the inevitable.
That raises the question. Does Leno move back to the Tonight Show in May 2010 or Sept 2010?

his podcast is comedy gold. he can banter with anyone, and make it funny as hell.
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He's told stories about warmup gigs before, and not liking them, but it was for smaller shows and i expect for guests who didn't want to be there, as opposed to a Tonight Show audience.
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Since Pardo had his kid, he's been looking ot get off the road, i'm glad to find he's found a steady gig locally.

This man desperately needs his own show. I still laugh thinking about the Pokemon-Joe Camel parody he made for the short-lived TV Funhouse. That was one of the funniest segments ever made in this or any universe.

The warm-up comedy was "Jimmy" not Don! He was right on point with the type of humor we have come to expect from Conan and crew. Pardo definitely fits right in and sets the table nicely for this great show. Hello Conan and good riddance Jay.